


flatlands to your door (i need you so much closer)

by agenderleadingplayer



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, alcohol mention, i've been reading too much neil gaiman, season 7 i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:11:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7867276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenderleadingplayer/pseuds/agenderleadingplayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"all your tomorrows start here." - fragile things, neil gaiman</p><p>a story of payphones and crop circles and missing and wanting and desert sand, of late summer storms and favorite colors.</p><p>a story of how a month is far too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flatlands to your door (i need you so much closer)

**Author's Note:**

> i've been binge-reading gaiman so i sound like him which is i guess a good thing? except i don't Quite sound like him i sound like i'm trying to be him yikes and sorry. 
> 
> title from the death cab song "transatlanticism" - i'm just using up every single song of theirs as inspiration/titles until i run out, so...

**_2000._ ** **_  
_**  
the cabinets are the color of brandy.  
  
it's the first thing he notices, spots it before anything else; this dilapidated rental he'll be in for a month and it smells like it too, like the ghost of some old man who drinks out of a short glass and makes a point of telling everyone it's from italy. he doesn't remember which state he's in; he thinks it might be somewhere in southeastern california.  
  
and, somehow, in an awful ironic way, that would be fitting: the home of bleak desert sand and a valley that took its name from a black pointed hood and a scythe – the lowest point in the country, he remembers, trivia from geography classes he’s long half-forgotten; and god does it feel like it.  
  
the stench of the apartment soon starts to get him some kind of drunk and his headache forces him to the front lobby where a pay phone waits expectantly. a stack of quarters jingles in his pocket and he hopes, wishes for forty-five minutes, an hour – it is only 7:15 but not back home.  
  
the line clicks on the third ring and she answers "hello?" with a yawn and he wonders if he might have woken her. indie rock plays over the speakers softly and an old woman waiting for an elevator looks side-eyed at him, the giddy grown man in a phone booth, talking to who-knows-who.  
  
"it's me."  
  
she laughs, but not really; he can only hear her exhale sharply and smile against the receiver but, he reasons, that's certainly happy enough. "i know."  
  
why in hell did i think it was a remotely good idea to be here for a month, he doesn't ask. why did skinner put me on this when he knew – because he must have known, it was no secret, he doesn't ask. what he does say, which isn't much, is about the flight, or the work; he talks in short sentences like he hasn't kissed her before, isn't taking up time and salvaging quarters to talk uninhibited to her in a phone booth (something, he finds himself realizing if he thinks about it too long, far too intimate for this...whatever this was). he asks her how she's doing and she says fine and means it. "good night," he says, because he is afraid he might say something else.  
  
"good night," she replies, meaning something else entirely. and that's all.  
  
he calls her periodically for a week and sometimes he says goodnight. sometimes he thinks it is good, this, this whatever it is, this ridding himself of her (god, is that what it was? such an inhumane, disgusting look at it, this) for even a month; maybe he'd come back and not want her as hard. there are other nights, nights he does not talk about, where he takes up all the cushions on the couch and the chair and the window seat in that intoxicating apartment and hunts for quarters, for dimes, for pay phone food that will buy him fifteen minutes, nights where an hour is not an hour but a goal, a financial checkpoint; he considers, briefly, stupidly, standing on a street corner with a mug in his hand like he has bigger things to worry about than how the lady at the pizza place he lives (?) above had sighed one big long sigh after counting out his change for the fifth time that week.  
  
he tries his hardest not to call her. or, he tries his hardest to pretend that he does not want to call her. she is all right at home and a month is a long time but if she wants to call she will, he reasons with himself, takes giant things like wanting and tries to compress them down to something he can hold in his hands; seven years of want reduced down to the size of a deck of cards – he does not tell her he loves her. he barely asks her how she's doing.  
  
eventually he forgets the definition of the word want and there's still two weeks to go.  
  
instead of wanting he worries – her apartment is always cold. her hands are always cold. he thinks of calling her to ask her if she's warm enough, needs to call somebody about the furnace in her building but never got around to it; she would roll her eyes at him and he would, somehow, be able to hear it. "i'm fine," she would say, and it would not matter whether or not she actually was because that would be that.  
  
so the calling gets less frequent but not too much so; the phone booth is as much his as the investigation site – crop circles.  
  
"some whack job with a lawnmower," she'd said when he told her, before he left. "but go if you'd like."  
  
the grass is singed a midnight black and reeks of some chemical he does not know the name of. he thinks, if only i had someone with me who knew chemicals. he thinks, if only i had someone with me who went to medical school. who could rewrite einstein. who could tell whatever the hell this was before i even had to ask.  
  
he thinks about her saying the name of whatever compound it could possibly be and his temporary partner (who will never be his partner; it's only a month. it's only a month) looks on confusedly at this man, standing in a cornfield staring down at the burnt stalks and smiling to himself.

"ammonium sulfate," his partner who is not his partner says, and she sounds too much like her. "an inorganic salt used to fertilize crops. it got burnt and this is what happened. it's a bust, agent mulder." and the way she says his name is foreign on her lips. he thinks he could be in 1993 but he is not, it is the turn of the century and he is in southern california with a woman whose name he has already forgotten. he mutters something to himself. "what was that?"

"i wish scully were here."  
  
and his partner, who is not, who will never be his partner, rolls her eyes and he tries his best to look away. thank god her eyes are brown, he thinks. thank god her hair is blonde.  
  
one night he has enough quarters for thirty-five minutes and he tells her so, and she congratulates him: "good job, mulder. finally found another place to make change for you?" and he laughs and says yes, yes i did, thank god. he can hear her smiling again. she asks him about his new partner who is not his partner.  
  
"she's new, i think," he says, tries to find good, easy words to use that won't come out sounding too much like i miss you and, god, i've still got a week and a half here. "doesn't really get that when you work together it's not...you're not buddy-buddy. bit of an oversharer, i guess."  
  
"are we not...buddy-buddy?" it's a joke but she sounds the slightest bit offended.  
  
"i..." i miss you. "i've known her three weeks. i already know the entire medical situation of bumper, her pet boxer."  
  
"does she know anything about...extraterrestrials?" she says it like the line is tapped, but she's smiling.  
  
"she thinks the same as you did – whack job with a lawnmower."  
  
"seems i'm being replaced pretty fast, huh?"  
  
he almost says no. he almost says: i will not be able to get a good night's sleep until i see you again. he almost says: if you were here this case would have been solved in three days. he almost says: if you were here.  
  
instead he realizes that he will come back home, back to the office, knowing the favorite color and favorite movie and favorite everything of this woman with brown eyes and blonde hair, who is not, will never be his partner; knowing everything and nothing about the person he came back to see, will not sleep until he sees. he does not know her favorite color.  
  
so he asks her.  
  
"...why do you want to know?"  
  
he laughs. "we've known each other seven years and i never once thought to ask it, i guess." he takes a breath. so does she.  
  
"green." a beat. "yours?"  
  
"orange."  
  
and she laughs, loud. "really? i never would've thought..."  
  
and the pay phone cuts in, tells him in a voice too automated, too cold, that he needs to put in more money or he's going to have to hang up. his pockets are empty.  
  
"sorry, i ran out of time..."  
  
"it's okay. good night, mulder."  
  
"good night, scully."  
  
he does not say: if you were here. he pretends he does not think it either.  
  
the next night all he talks about is the work – she has a message from skinner and relays it; they both make snide remarks at the incredible lack of cell service in this endless, swallowing desert. it is why he commences on his daily hunt for change – once, he remembers but does not repeat, he had asked his temporary, month-long not-partner if she had any coins. she started talking about how the penny was useless and would be taken out of circulation soon probably and had not given him anything. he has nine days left.  
  
the case is solved and she had been right – a farmer who just wanted his fifteen minutes of fame. he does not call her to tell her. he has money. he is, he reasons, easing away.  
  
he has six days left.  
  
but the one-room has him drunk again so he makes his way down to the lobby, into the old-fashioned booth; wooden doors swing behind him – he has fifteen minutes.  
  
"we solved the case," he says, after the it's me. it's solved, it's done. it was only a month. i'll be back soon.  
  
"good." she seems half-interested. he wonders what time it is at home; checks his watch: 9:30 pacific time.  
  
"you were right. asshole farmer." she laughs at that. then, "did i wake you?"  
  
"it's okay," she says, in lieu of a yes or no. he feels bad, thinks of apologizing. he doesn't.  
  
"tomorrow i'm gonna...spend some time in death valley i think. look around." he does not say: it won't be right when you're not here. he does not say.  
  
"okay." she is tired.  
  
"i'm sorry i woke you." she doesn't say anything.  
  
"you have...six days left?"  
  
"yeah."  
  
"if your case is done..." he hears her take an almost shuddering breath. "come home sooner. if you can..." and then "goodnight."  
  
"goodnight." he knows it's the closest they'll ever get to i love you.  
  
the next day, true to his word, he makes his way to the lowest point on the continent, navigating sand and rock and wondering why his ears don't feel different; he has no cell service – he never did, but now his phone makes a point of telling him so with a loud beep the minute he steps off the bus.  
  
an old man stands next to him at the station to the park, in a wide-brimmed hat accompanied by a long grey coat. it's warm here, for almost-fall; he thinks to ask the man about his coat, doesn't.  
  
"come here often?" he says to the man, almost as a joke, but the man nods and he feels as if he has to say something. "my first time," he manages awkwardly. "where do you think i should start?"  
  
grey coat man points to a fallen-down wooden structure off in the distance, marked with a sign he cannot read from here. "leadfield," he says, quietly. "ghost town. cool, if you're into stuff like that."  
  
"haunted?" usually ghost towns aren't, but who knows. if he can't get a saucer, ghosts are a close second.  
  
"nah. not that we know of anyway. they're just called that because one day – well in this case the post office closed, and, bam. everyone gone. pretty creepy lookin' place though, if ya ask me."  
  
"huh. thanks." he turns to go.  
  
grey coat man stops him. "travelin' alone, are ya?"  
  
"well, i'm. here on business and it's...one of my last days so i thought...yes."  
  
the man laughs, looks him up and down. he finds himself liking this man less and less. "a man like you, ya gotta find somebody. can't be alone forever."  
  
"i mean, i've got...people. well, one. person." and the man is right – when he's alone conversation is not his strong suit.  
  
"well why ain't she with ya?" and with a guttural laugh grey coat man heads off, leaving him alone with nothing but sand and a ten minute walk to a ghost town.  
  
leadfield is small – the sign serves no purpose only to welcome and to tell the town's story: post office closes, everyone out. beyond the sign, it consists of two wooden buildings, a dangerous-looking entrance to a since-abandoned underground mine, and some rocks, and as he nears closer the familiar feeling of desert aloneness wraps around him like a cloak. he thinks about bringing her here, about them looking for something-or-other in the lonely california desert, in the lowest place in america. he thinks about kissing her in front of the old post office, thinks about the two of them alone in an un-haunted ghost town.  
  
but there's really nothing to do when she's not there to talk to so after looking around for a bit he heads, slowly, back to the bus station – the first place in weeks, he finds, with at least a little bit of reception. and thank goodness, too – he hadn't thought to bring coins.  
  
"you ever heard of leadfield?" he asks her, after the hellos and things. no, she says, i haven't, what's leadfield. and he tells her about the two wooden buildings and abandoned mineshaft; about the sign and the post office and the somewhat disappointing lack of actual ghosts. he tells her, i'd like to go with you sometime. you would like it, i bet, he says. and she says sure, and his bus comes. "talk to you later, okay?" he's smiling. okay, is the response, and she hangs up and he thinks about how she'd told him to come home soon, if he could, last night. he will, he thinks. "i will," he says, to no one.  
  
the bus rattles on its way back to whatever the name of the town he's staying in is, and the low rumble of the engine calls something to mind and as the desert passes fast in front of him he thinks about arizona highways and motels and never saying things at the right time. figuring there's nothing else to do, he leans back against the seat and closes his eyes. it's too quiet and grey coat man had not come back – he thinks, before he goes to sleep, that leadfield may be haunting him.  
  
the engine sputters and lurches as the bus pulls into the station and he jolts awake, not knowing, for a good ten seconds, where he is and why he's there. it is, by some miraculous feat of nature, raining, the dust and sand and low plants sagging in the heat and the wet. he steps onto the pavement and it smells like a summer storm; almost, if he really breathes and really tries, like the east coast. he half-remembers – someone had told him once, this smell: petrichor, the smell of summer showers. low and humid and suffocating, but damn if it hasn't rained in months.  
  
and he thinks about going through the side door of the bad pizza shop, up the old desert elevator into the one-room, then changes his mind and sets off on a walk, the rain still coming down.  
  
technically, he has five days left – more than half a week to eat shitty pizza and stumble slightly tipsy, although not of his own volition, to the makeshift lobby that smells of cleaning fluid and mozzarella cheese, buy himself twenty minutes, twenty-five.  
  
it will be five days of quarter-hunting, five days of clipped conversations and, goddamn, how he wants to see her again. five days of not dare letting himself say any more than necessary, any more than he should. he passes a convenience store and realizes, halfheartedly, he has never drunk brandy in his life. he wonders if the kind they sell here is from italy. the thought of it makes him sick – he buys a coke instead.  
  
johnny cash plays low over the speakers and his cashier, a woman who looks to be in her late sixties, calls him sonny. he laughs. popped in to escape the rain, she asks him, and he says no. he hands her a five, soaked through; asks her to give him his change in coins. it's still pouring when he leaves, and the coke tastes nicer than anything he's had all month.  
  
by the time he gets back to the side door of the restaurant he's sopping wet, trying his hardest to wring out what he can. eventually, reluctantly, he discards his button-down entirely, squeezing the rainwater out onto the welcome mat. his undershirt is pretty much done for too, but there's nothing he can really do about that, he thinks as he steps into the tragically familiar lobby. the coke can makes its home in the garbage and he hums as he heads over to the booth: "on a sunday morning sidewalk..." he has twenty-five minutes in coins.  
  
she picks up on the fourth ring and he says it's me and she says i know and she's smiling. "how's the rest of your day been?" she asks, and he thinks about the falling asleep on the bus and the petrichor and the coke and the johnny cash, and he laughs a small laugh that he hopes she can hear.  
  
"i took a walk," he says. "it was raining."  
  
"you walked in the rain."  
  
he says yes with a smile and almost ends the call there. "i'm coming home tomorrow," he tells her, before he even really knows he's saying it, and she says good, that's good, and he imagines her in her apartment sitting at her desk or on her bed talking to him, and, he thinks, he needs to see her again, has never, he thinks, needed anything ever except for this.  
  
"scully." she says yes, what, and he almost says i miss you. instead, "remember indiana?" the other end is silent. he thinks she must have forgotten.  
  
eventually he hears her crack a smile and she says, "cher?" and he says yes, yes. she says, god, i haven't heard that song since. and he says, somewhat jokingly, sing it for me scully. and he knows if she were here with him she'd roll her eyes and cross her arms but she's not here with him, so she takes a deep breath and starts, softly, to sing. blue suede shoes. her voice is low and nothing like cher’s and he cannot stop smiling. she stops too soon. he wonders why.

he realizes, lets out a too-big laugh. then, right on cue: “chorus?”

and he sings along, sings about whether or not he really feels the way he feels. he’s in the lobby to his apartment building (that, really, was never his, always someone else’s; this west coast sand could have been his but not when he's alone) singing just loud enough to be heard: someone could hear you, he thinks. he thinks, i do not care. he thinks, we danced. yes, that was it, we’d danced mary-shelley to a song that wasn’t anybody’s except, maybe, for that one silent-movie night, ours. the chorus ends.

and the phone is warm in his hand, once-cool metal melded to the warm-blood humanness of him; the chorus ends. it's over. they're both just breathing. i’m coming home soon. tomorrow. you'll see me – the month is over. he doesn't say.

he says, that was nice. she says, yes. yes. they laugh, quietly, alone in their corners, a continent from each other, laugh low and sweet.

“see you tomorrow, mulder,” she says, finally, once they've finished laughing. he can still hear the ghost of a smile on her voice.

“see you tomorrow, scully,” he says. he cannot think of anything else to say.

the next day he goes to the airport and buys a plane ticket, simple as that. waits at the gate until the woman on the intercom says it is his turn to board and so he does, takes his carry-on with him.

the flight is long but uneventful – an attendant, tall and fake-blonde with bright pink lipstick, asks him if he wants anything to drink. “got any brandy?” he asks, with a laugh. she says no. he is relieved. in the end, he gets another coke.

three in a half hours in and he misses the desert. and he knows, is sure that he shouldn't, shouldn't miss that place that nearly swallowed him whole but he thinks of leadfield and can't help but laugh. the ghost town had been a beautiful kind of endless and he'd just passed through, not seen it all, not noticed everything. he doesn't miss the one-room but the desert he does miss, the pressurized cold on this plane making him nostalgic for the heat and the wind, the sand that he'd kicked up and which still clings to the bottom of his shoes.

the nation’s capital is humid, has never known desert as long as it's existed – it's always been swamp, been heavy and wet in the summers, even near the ends. he can feel the edges of autumn creeping up on him and knows that when the plane lands he’ll have a month or more of muggy dc days yet.

so he misses the sand, thinks to go back sometime soon but not alone, never alone. not after this. eventually he resigns himself to this cold cabin and looks at the clouds for something to do. he finishes his coke, orders another (and another). he makes notes for the report he will undoubtedly have to write; another case closed disappointingly close to reality but at least they got a special agent trained along the way.

and he thinks about that girl, the young one he'd spent many a work day with, about her brown eyes. he does not remember her name and has no care to. he rarely called her by it. she'd told him, one day, when bumper’s entire life story had finished being relayed to him, that she was considering moving out to the dc offices, or to quantico or somewhere, once she was all done with training. he hopes, somewhat selfishly, that she doesn't. she belongs to the sand, he thinks; as much as i don't.

the hours pass quickly after that, and the plane touches down at dulles just before eight. the sky has darkened to a deep purple, the sun still barely visible on the horizon in the diminishing dusk, making the clouds look, just barely, and only if you were really looking, pink. he hails a cab and asks for alexandria, and does not call her – he'll call her at home. come home sooner, if you can, she'd said. he had. he did.

and, it turns out, after he's opened the door to his new, fresh-scented (or, maybe just home-scented) place that he doesn't need to call her after all; she's already standing there, twenty feet ahead of him, perfectly manicured nails shaking fish food into his tank. he wonders if she's heard him come in.

“hi,” she says, without turning around. he forgets, momentarily, that breathing is something you need to do in order to survive.

her favorite color is green.

“thanks, for um. coming to…” he's not sure how to finish. she still hasn't turned around; she places the container back in its drawer and straightens out her shirt – she's not in work clothes, had instead come to his house in a tan sweater and jeans and he loves her, and thinks about telling her so; the wanting he'd pressed down, deck-of-cards sized, had accordioned out sometime in the last fifteen seconds and hangs low in the air – he wonders if she can see it too. he wants to touch her.

finally, slowly, she turns around and smiles, and walks over to him, wraps her arms around him tight. “it was a long month,” she says into his chest, and he nods; i missed you, he says. i took a walk in the rain.

she pulls away and laughs and he sees it, finally, hadn't seen it, seen her, in a month and here she is laughing. “yes, i know,” she tells him; “you told me.”

and she is there, in front of him, and, jesus, he thinks; it was a long month, yes it was. but she's standing there, holding his hands in hers in his apartment; she'd gone to feed his fish and she's here. he thinks to kiss her. he thinks to tell her about everything. he thinks, a month is a long time.

he smiles to himself, then asks – “hey, scully?”

“yeah?” she's still smiling and he wants to kiss her.

“ever had brandy?”

she cocks her head to the side. “as a matter of fact i have. why?”

“no reason.” then, “was it good?”

“disgusting,” she says. and he kisses her.

and she tastes like she always does (though, he admits, he hasn't kissed her much – something he is definitely going to need to rectify in the future), like lavender and rosemary, and he feels like light, he thinks. she was right – the month had been much too long.

he still half-misses the desert, he finds, when he pulls away, the both of them still light. the sand still sticks to his soles – but he'd only think to go back with her. desert sands alone are only interesting the first time around. after that they're just lonely.

he kisses her again and this time she's not expecting it, smiles into him and makes a small surprised noise at the back of her mouth. he wants this moment cut out and pinned on his wall, something to talk about later. remember the month, he'll say. oh yes, she'll reply. it was long. much too long. and that night? he'll ask. the night i got back? almost made up for it, she'll say. almost.

they watch some movie and he holds her hand. he says, we should go there, to that desert, the two of us one day. she smiles and nods, leans her head into his shoulder. he kisses her hand and he doesn’t say.

he doesn’t, he realizes, need to.

**Author's Note:**

> yes leadfield is a real place (it's actually super cool i'd recommend reading up on it); yes the pizza place he lives above is a real place but i don't know if there are apartments above it
> 
> thank you, as always, for reading!! leave a comment if you enjoyed (or even if you didn't lmao) i always love feedback!!
> 
> and if you'd like you can find me on tumblr @demiroscully!


End file.
